Nine Inch Nails

Trent Reznor may be remembered as rock’s Stanley Kubrick, a flawed yet brilliant recluse whose painstaking creative process produced great art and great frustration. It’s hard to believe that Reznor has issued only four full-length albums of original material in 16 years. Like his 1999 opus, The Fragile, Reznor’s latest does away with the frenetic pop hooks that made his early music both compelling and accessible. Teeth gnashes with angry slogans that would have sounded great when Reznor was an unknown curmudgeon but don’t sit well on the shoulders of a sourpuss millionaire rock star. Guest drummer Dave Grohl can’t even save the day — Reznor hacks up his beats so profoundly that the Foo frontman’s signature groove is reduced to Pro Tools salad. Reznor’s best material once throbbed like a fresh black eye, perfectly countering his digital proclivities. Now his patented sonics — which heralded the future in 1989 — sound like yesterday’s news. Rather than progress and dig into his tortured soul to create something new, Reznor treads water with Teeth — and goes belly up.